Nba Champions

This offseason, the Lakers went from being considered a team that's boring to watch to the team to watch. They acquired premier point guard Steve Nash and All-Star center Dwight Howard, propelling the team to the forefront of the NBA championship conversation. The oddsmakers immediately responded, improving the Lakers' odds of winning a championship from 7-1 to 3-1 last month, according to RJ Bell of Pregame.com . That put them squarely behind the Miami Heat, who are favored to repeat with 2-1 odds.

INDIANA AT MIAMI 3 p.m. PDT Sunday. TV: None. Winners of 17 consecutive games, Miami is wiping away some of its smudges from earlier in the season while it cleans up on the rest of the NBA. Last week, the Heat posted a resounding comeback victory against New York after previously suffering a pair of 20-point defeats against the Knicks. Now the Heat looks to improve on its 0-2 record against Indiana, widely perceived as the only realistic challenger to the defending NBA champions in the Eastern Conference.

INDIANA AT MIAMI 3 p.m. PDT Sunday. TV: None. Winners of 17 consecutive games, Miami is wiping away some of its smudges from earlier in the season while it cleans up on the rest of the NBA. Last week, the Heat posted a resounding comeback victory against New York after previously suffering a pair of 20-point defeats against the Knicks. Now the Heat looks to improve on its 0-2 record against Indiana, widely perceived as the only realistic challenger to the defending NBA champions in the Eastern Conference.

The Clippers are in the championship conversation. Imagine saying that. But it's true. The Clippers have the third-best record in the Western Conference at 39-17, 4 1/2 games behind conference leader San Antonio (43-12) and one game behind Oklahoma City (39-15). The Clippers have the best point guard in the NBA in Chris Paul and a rising star in power forward Blake Griffin. They have the veteran presence of Chauncey Billups and the deepest team in the NBA, led by reserve guard Jamal Crawford.

Befitting their status as the defending NBA champions, the Boston Celtics are a loose group. Such was the case before Tuesday night's 117-109 upset loss in Hartford, Conn., to the Washington Bullets. In the locker room, a group of the Celtics were huddled around a television screen, not watching films of the Bullets but rather an episode of an obscure game show. The contestants?

It was on enemy turf this time, so the Lakers dug in and readied for Houston to take its best shot at revenge. The Rockets did too. But they missed. Thirteen days after crushing the Rockets at the Forum, the Lakers delivered another blow to the suddenly staggering NBA champions on Thursday night, winning a close game this time, 97-94, at the Summit as Cedric Ceballos had a season-high 36 points and 10 rebounds.

Horace Grant is so enchanted by his adopted home on California's Central Coast that he might be mistaken for a Realtor or tourism-council spokesman. "It's so serene," he says. "It's such a beautiful area. " At the moment, the former Lakers forward is seated in the living room of a rented hilltop home high above Pismo Beach. Out the window on a clear winter day, views of the jagged coastline are magnificent, stretching from San Luis Obispo Bay to the northwest, the shimmering Pacific Ocean dead ahead and, to the south, the Pismo Dunes Natural Preserve and beyond.

Surely, it was suggested to Kobe Bryant after Wednesday night's overtime victory over the Sacramento Kings, there have to be some good vibes about the Lakers now that the playoffs are here. After all, the 82-game regular season was tedious at times for the Lakers. But now they can focus just on the New Orleans Hornets, their first-round opponent. How does Bryant feel about the Lakers going into the postseason? "I'm not sure. I don't know," Bryant said, chuckling. "This team is so weird.

Detroit guard Vinnie Johnson agreed to contract terms with the two-time NBA champions after holding out for $3.2 million for two years. Details were not disclosed.

If it looked like Phil Jackson, talked like Phil Jackson and walked like a wounded buck, then that must have been the past-present-future Laker coach who stood in front of Los Angeles mid-afternoon Tuesday, adjusted his glasses and said something along the lines of, "I'm back," only longer and without the Jordanian flair. He was gone a year, out experiencing life away from the game, on beaches in Australia and New Zealand, on a lake in Montana, on a veranda in Playa del Rey.

LeBron James sprawled his body on the Staples Center court, endangering a physique that no Lloyd's of London policy could adequately protect. He was a twisting mass of sinewy muscle, reaching low to grab the ball away from Kobe Bryant on a long rebound. The Miami Heat star dove to the floor in that fourth-quarter moment Thursday and spun toward the Lakers' three-point line. Rising quickly, James absorbed contact from a quickly closing Bryant and started a fast break that ended with the best player on this planet or any other finding Ray Allen for an open three-pointer that gave Miami the lead.

This offseason, the Lakers went from being considered a team that's boring to watch to the team to watch. They acquired premier point guard Steve Nash and All-Star center Dwight Howard, propelling the team to the forefront of the NBA championship conversation. The oddsmakers immediately responded, improving the Lakers' odds of winning a championship from 7-1 to 3-1 last month, according to RJ Bell of Pregame.com . That put them squarely behind the Miami Heat, who are favored to repeat with 2-1 odds.

The Oklahoma City Thunder is facing elimination for the first time in the 2012 postseason, down three games to one after the Miami Heat's 104-98 victory Tuesday in Game 4 of the NBA Finals. Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and company cruised through the first two rounds of the playoffs basically unchallenged, sweeping the defending champion Dallas Mavericks in the first round and needing just five games to knock off the Lakers in the second round. Their only trouble came in the Western Conference finals against the surging San Antonio Spurs, who had won 18 straight going into the series.

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Andrew Bynum was right. Close-out games can be easy. The Oklahoma City Thunder stepped all over the Lakers in the fourth quarter of their 106-90 Game 5 victory Monday night at Chesapeake Energy Arena, ending the Lakers' season yet again in the Western Conference semifinals. It wasn't as bad as last season's 36-point blowout loss in Dallas, and there won't be any carry-over suspensions for next season, but the two-championship run the Lakers put together couldn't have seemed any further in the past.

-- The Times' Mike Bresnahan mentions how the Lakers are 4-1 without Kobe Bryant, earning them a day off on Monday. -- The Times' T.J. Simers praises, in his tongue-in-cheek way, how Bryant has coached the team from the sideline. -- The Times' Baxter Holmes explains how NBA players have adjusted to a lack of sleep during a lockout shortened season. -- The Orange County Register's Kevin Ding lauds Bryant's coaching.  -- The Dallas Morning News' Eddie Sefko rips Lakers announcer Lawrence Tanter for not addressing the Dallas Mavericks Sunday as the reigning NBA champions.

There's no such thing as regular-season vengeance for an embarrassing playoff ouster the previous year. But the Lakers have put together a portfolio of victories against the Dallas Mavericks this season, winning four and losing none, the latest a 112-108 overtime win Sunday at Staples Center. It's interesting mainly because they might play each other in the first round of the playoffs, which are finally coming soon in this chaotically compressed lockout season. It's also something - eye-opening?

Reggie Miller never got open enough to start yapping. Mark Jackson didn't do anything close to meriting a shimmy-shake. And Chris Mullin--was he even playing? The Indiana Pacers were broken down, bottled up and just plain beaten in what might have been one of the Chicago Bulls' best defensive efforts ever. Now comes the tricky part: figuring out how to do it again. It certainly is going to be tough to top.

Desperation breeds desperate matchups like today's 12:30 p.m. meeting of the Clippers and Miami. In the good news for both, someone has to win! Don't laugh. It doesn't happen often. The Heat hasn't won in 12 days since beating Charlotte at home -- a five-game losing streak, the last four occurring on a six-game Western trip. The Clippers lost seven straight between a Nov. 21 home win over Denver and Friday's victory in Sacramento.

Reporting from Dallas -- It was the end of a six-game trip, and the Clippers were facing defending NBA champion Dallas in a city where they haven't won since April 19, 2006. And yet after 11 days on the road, after going from Washington to Orlando to Cleveland to Philadelphia to Charlotte and finally to Dallas, after losing Chauncey Billups to a season-ending torn Achilles' tendon in Orlando, the Clippers put themselves in position to win. They didn't, dropping a 96-92 decision to the Mavericks, but only after Caron Butler missed a potential game-winning three-point shot in the final seconds Monday night at American Airlines Center.

The third of the Clippers' back-to-back-to-back games came Wednesday night against the defending NBA champion Dallas Mavericks, a night after L.A. was embarrassed in Utah. The Clippers were challenged by their coach to put forth a more energized effort than they displayed against the Jazz on Tuesday night. After a series of late-game mishaps by Chauncey Billups, the veteran guard delivered for the Clippers with a game-winning three-pointer that lifted his team to a 91-89 victory over Dallas.